Summers at the cottage have become an important tradition for many Canadians. Included in the tradition is the opening of the cottage, and the installation of the “dock”. The cottager will either do this on their own or hire contractors to complete the installation. Often, they are formed from dock segments which pivot together by way of a pin joining adjacent dock hinges together. Docks come in a variety of forms including floating and/or stationary, usually with multiple segments made from a variety of materials such as wood and aluminum.
Installing a dock is normally done with a hinge-type coupling of having matching hinge plates (similar to those of a door hinge) installed on facing ends of adjacent dock segments. The difficult part of the installation arises when attempting to line up and install a close fitting pin in opposing hinge plates with a suitably alignment in order to do so. This means that both sets of hinge plates on opposing ends of dock segment must be aligned in all directions for the insertion of the pin in one of the aligned sets of hinge plates to be successful.
It can be very frustrating to hold and retain the segments of any dock in their exact location to physically maintain the exact alignment in all directions for the pin to be inserted in between a narrow gap between them. All the while, the cottager is trying to avoid pinching fingers, as loads are shifting to insert the pin over open water without dropping the pin, parts and tools into the water. Wave action, current, wind, cold water, and sudden expected shifts of weight by helpers on the dock segments, are some other factors that can complicate the effort. It is, to say the least, rare that a finger is not pinched, or a knuckle is not skinned. Tools must be located and maintained and it is quite likely that, at each successive dock installation effort, more tools, pins, clips and the like, find their way to the bottom of the lake.